To avoid Probate, put the designation of P.O.D. (Payable On Death) on your bank accounts – checking, savings, CDs – and T.O.D. (Transfer On Death) on your brokerage accounts & stocks, and simply name beneficiaries on your 401k & IRA retirement accounts. Then when you keel over, those assets will pass automatically to the beneficiaries you designated. Some states even allow you to put a TOD on your car’s registration.

All you need to do to get those designations is simply ask for them. It’s virtually that easy. Oh, and it’s FREE! Doing this for yourself, as well as for the geezers in your life, can save thousands. It will also make life mucho easier for those who are left to tidy up after one takes the dirt nap.

Enjoy my floating head as you check out the video I did on this topic a few years ago.

A couple years ago, I started loaning money to complete strangers via Lending Club and Prosper. You can read about Year One here. $25 was the most I lent to any of the 30 people. I spread it around. I mean, I diversified my portfolio. Ah yes, that sounds much more pompous.

After one year, my returns were 7.30% and 8.85% respectively. Pretty sweet. A year later, those returns have dropped to 6.89% and 5.35% for the two year span. What the, what?

I opened for Donny Osmond at Bogart’s in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 4, 1991. It was the Soldier of Love Tour. I forget what Donny called his tour. This photo was taken backstage.

Prosper dropped 3.5%. Why? Turns out I got the shiv from one of those who borrowed from me. My financial advisor Donny Osmond says one bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch, girl. First of all Don, stop calling me girl. Secondly, one bad apple does quite a number on the bushel. This was kind of a surprise because I chose to lend only to people who had the highest credit rankings and were deemed lowest risk to default on the loans. Oh well. Prosper has sent this to collections after four months of non-payment. If the borrower settles, I will get some of my money back. I’m still way up!

Having skin in the game, as I do in this case playing banker, I get a better understanding of what it feels like being in lenders’ shoes. Of the 20 loans I have out at Prosper, 10 are still current, 9 have paid them off in full, and 1 has defaulted.

Lending Club dropped less than half a percentage point for a couple reasons. The

Why walk from the airport, over the river and through the woods for MeeMaw’s roast beast? If you need some wheels, check out the free AutoSlash rental car search engine. What makes them different from Expedia or Orbitz, is that AutoSlash tracks your rental rate and rebooks you if the price drops – then sends you an email with the details.

AutoSlash could not find a car for me this upcoming Christmas week, so I booked one via Expedia. Then I went back to AutoSlash and plugged in my new reservation under “Track a rental you’ve booked elsewhere”. A few days later, I got an email from AutoSlash that my four day Christmas week rental was slashed $42.21 – from $138.61 to $96.40. Here’s my 2010 AutoSlash video:

Now through Halloween (all of October), open a new TradeKing account and get a $50 bonus when you fund it with $3,000 in cash or stocks, and make three trades. Use your bonus as a downpayment on that 1,000 count bag of Fun-Sized Snickers you have been eyeballing. No promotion code is needed, but you must click hereto receive this exclusive $50 bonus offer.

At only $4.95 per trade it’s a money making venture. If you don’t have an extra three large sitting around, you can also get the $50 bonus if you open an account by transferring over $3,000 in stock from another brokerage house. TradeKing will refund up to $150 in transfer fees from your old brokerage house to TradeKing. FYI: The most I have ever been charged to transfer stocks from one place to another is $100. The receiving house has always refunded the transfer fee.

The $3,000 must remain in the account (minus any losses) for 90 days or you may lose your $50 bonus. Not valid for IRAs or other retirement accounts. New accounts only. One offer per household. SIPC insured.

Here’s a video post I did last year with more reasons to put your stocks in a brokerage house like TradeKing:

I just got $80 off DirecTV because of the Viacom kerfuffle. As you may know, Viacom pulled its channels off DirecTV, while they try to hash out a deal. That ain’t my problem! A quick call to DirecTV’s Customer Retention department to complain yielded an $80 credit. That is on top of the $43/month in savings I already get. Call DirecTV now, before they make nicey-nice with Viacom.

This content is not provided or commissioned by the company whose products are featured on this site. Any opinions, analyses, reviews or evaluations provided here are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the Advertiser. This site may be compensated through the Advertiser’s affiliate programs.

You can benefit GREATLY, as I have, doing as little as you want. I am happy to help!

Click on Chip’s Favorite Credit Card Offers for up-to-date deals, terms, and conditions on cards that give airline miles, cash back, travel, hotel points and more. Email me if you have any questions about which card might be right for your situation.

I wanna recap some 2011 Highlights: My father passed away. Wait, what? Allow me to rephrase. My pappy passed away in 2011, but we had his financial world in order. It was free to do his “Estate Planning”. That is something most every adult should do. It’s a New Year. Whaddyasay you bang it out? Don’t cost nuthin’. When all was said and done, we saved my dad’s estate, and thereby me and my siblings, $14,000.

PodCASHt: Poker’s Jamie Gold

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This content is not provided or commissioned by the company whose products are featured on this site. Any opinions, analyses, reviews or evaluations provided here are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the Advertiser. This site may be compensated through the Advertiser’s affiliate programs.